[Koha] List of what each field in the various tables do

olwen olwen at ihug.co.nz
Thu Apr 22 05:40:03 NZST 2004


I wrote a reply yesterday and didn't check it went to the list.  Here's 
my explanation for everyone

The item number is the number that identifies the book -- I thin 
librarians call this the self list number.
Biblio is the overall grouping of all titles.  E.G. C.S. Lewis, "The 
Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe"
Biblioitem is the edition level  E.G. Hardback, paperback, big print 
version, special leather bound version.

The biblioitem number and the biblio number are simply unique keys for 
database relationships.
This works well for reservations. When I designed the reservation system 
I designed it so that a person could reserve "The Lion, the Witch and 
the Wardrobe" and get the first available copy, or could specifically 
request the large print version.


Freddie Cash wrote:

> We're just starting out with Koha 2.0 to see if it could be used as a 
> replacement for Follett.   However, we are running into a few snags 
> that should be fairly simple to fix.
> 
> Our major snag is lack of documentation for the internals of Koha.  For 
> instance, is there a description of the various database tables, and 
> what each field is used for?  This would make mapping fields to MARC 
> fields much simpler.  We're running into problems with our mappings, 
> especially with the distinction between items and biblioitems, for 
> instance.
> 
> Is this kind of low-level documentation available anywhere??



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